Just Say No
by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: Draco has decided that Harry is his mate. Harry has other ideas. Can he outsmart the conspiracy to get them together? NOT DracoHarry. WIP ON HOLD
1. Prologue

**Title: Just Say No**

**Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel**

**Pairings: None at present: please note this is NOT, and NEVER WILL BE, a Draco/Harry. Just wanted to make that clear. **

**Setting: Beginning of sixth year onwards. Non-HBP compliant, but apart from that Harry's history pretty much lines up with what's in the books.**

**Author notes: **

_Okay, I had inspiration for this one; "_Love and Betrayal_" by _feanor,_ a story in which Draco apparently decides to make Harry his mate and Harry resists. I've always hated the 'Draco the veela, Harry his mate' stories, and so I loved feanor's fic. I decided to do my own take on it._

_ Parseltongue _

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**PROLOGUE**

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"_You have a look that makes me want to resign and live the rest of my life as a goat-herder somewhere – because at least that way I won't have to face you."_

-All Night Long _by_ Jeconais

Harry trudged up the staircase to the headmaster's office gloomily. A single sentence could sum up what was going through his mind: _what the hell does the old coot want now?_

This was not a particularly respectful way to refer to the school's headmaster, Leader of the Light and Lord of the Lemon Drops, however it must be admitted that this form of address was to some extent justified. Harry had endured a very trying life, much of it due to the decisions made by the old man, and every time Harry was called into the office upstairs it was usually because the headmaster wanted to introduce some new problem to Harry's notice. Thus, if Harry knocked on the office door looking rather apprehensive, few would have blamed him.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore greeted him as he entered.

"Headmaster," Harry returned with a marked lack of enthusiasm. _Lord, I'm sounding like Snape again. Got to stop that. _A quick glance around the office informed him that besides himself and Dumbledore there were two other people in the room; a snarky-looking Snape and none other than Draco Malfoy.

"Take a seat, my boy, take a seat," Dumbledore told him cheerfully. Harry sat on one of the chairs on the opposite side of the room to the two Slytherins, eying them warily as he did so. As his eyes met Malfoy's the Slytherin blushed slightly, much to Harry's surprise.

_What's going on?_

"Harry," Dumbledore began, and Harry saw with alarm and a growing sense of dread that the man's face was grave, the twinkle in his eyes dimmed, "I have a very important matter to speak to you about."

_Bad feeling just increased threefold._

"You see," the man continued, "young Draco here is part-veela. For most of his life his vela blood has had little effect on how he lives, however during the summer Draco celebrated his sixteenth birthday and came into his veela powers. Among other things, this meant that Draco was able to identify his mate."

_Oh, hell no. Please tell me this isn't going where I think it is going…_

"Harry you are Draco's mate."

_Yep, it is._

"I refuse," Harry said calmly, even though inside red tendrils were beginning to leech out through his emerald-green composure.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, a little sternly, "you don't understand. Unless you and Draco form and consummate a mate-bond within a year, Draco will die."

Harry considered this for precisely 2.4 seconds.

"So?"

"Why, you worthless brat!" Snape seethed, getting to his feet and preparing to curse him. Harry whipped out his wand in response and aimed it between the man's eyes.

_Bring it on._

"Severus! Harry!" Dumbledore called sharply. "Sit!"

Reluctantly Snape sat, while Harry lowered his wand.

"Please, Potter," Malfoy spoke for the first time, "without you, I'll die. Everyone knows you're the perfect Gryffindor. You wouldn't let that happen."

_Oh yeah? Watch me._

"And come now, I _am_ a Malfoy. You'd live a life of luxury. Most people would give anything for that kind of status."

Malfoy decided to bring out the veela allure.

Harry promptly swatted it away like a bug.

"What?" he snorted, seeing the looks on everyone's faces. "I can resist _Imperius_, can't I? Why would veela powers give me any trouble, especially from someone who isn't even a full veela? My answer is still no."

With a roar, Snape leapt out of his chair and opened his mouth.

Harry instantly stunned him. There was an astonished silence.

"Harry, Professor Snape…"

"…was about to curse me," Harry interrupted evenly. His voice had gone low and dangerous, and although Dumbledore did not have the gift to see it, the red tendrils of magic were reaching further out through his aura and beginning to overwhelm the green. "This is a personal matter and if I wish to refuse the bond then I have the perfect right to do so. I am sorry if it means that Malfoy will die, but that is not my problem."

Malfoy, meanwhile, was looking genuinely crushed. Harry almost felt sorry for him. Not quite, however, as Malfoy had done too much to make himself obnoxious for Harry to feel any real guilt. No, Harry was through with guilt, through with noble-mindedness. This year he was living for _himself_.

"Harry, this is your responsibility…"

Red flared, snapping and crackling like bolts of electricity.

"_No it is not!_" Harry snarled. "If you have nothing else to tell me, headmaster, then I will be leaving. This conversation is over."

Harry James Potter stormed from the office, leaving one heartbroken part-veela and one irritated headmaster, neither of whom were ready to give up any time soon. The fight was on.


	2. A Black Point of View

**Title: Just Say No**

**Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel**

**Pairings: None at present: please note this is NOT, and NEVER WILL BE, a Draco/Harry. Just wanted to make that clear. **

**Setting: Beginning of sixth year onwards. Non-HBP compliant, but apart from that Harry's history pretty much lines up with what's in the books.**

**Author notes: **

_Okay, I had inspiration for this one; "_Love and Betrayal_" by _feanor,_ a story in which Draco apparently decides to make Harry his mate and Harry resists. I've always hated the 'Draco the veela, Harry his mate' stories, and so I loved feanor's fic. I decided to do my own take on it._

_ Parseltongue _

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**CHAPTER ONE:**

**A BLACK POINT OF VIEW**

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_"Believe me; we all tried to get out of this. The first pair of scissors I find I'm taking with me to visit the Headmaster."_

-Pretty Little Secrets _by_ sparkley-tangerine

88888888

_From the point of view of whom Harry visits next._

I was hanging out at the top of the Astronomy Tower as usual when a straight, thin figure stepped through the doorway in a swirl of black robes. I didn't need the messy black hair and the steely green eyes obscured by old-fashioned glasses to tell me who it was; the red tentacles of magic trying to escape an emerald core could only belong to one person.

"Hey Potter," I greeted him. "Bad day?"

"Horribly," the boy said icily. He stalked past me to the edge of the tower and sat carefully, wrapping his arms around his knees and gazing out into the darkness.

Most people don't even know of my existence. It's not surprising. I let few people see me, after all; a Black, a ghost? Why, it's a disappointment to the family name. Not that the last of the Blacks wasn't even more of one, but still… The point is, if it became commonly-known that Thyone Athena Black, the only Black in the last two centuries to inherit the Sight, was haunting Hogwarts, my reputation would be severely tainted.

Harry is one of the rare exceptions. The reason that I haunt the Tower in the first place is to make sure that no one else tries to throw themselves off it the way that I did, and so when I caught Harry attempting to do so a couple of years back I naturally did my best to stop him. It took some convincing, but in the end he told me exactly what was bothering him and I helped him deal with it in a less suicidal fashion. After that, any time that something was really troubling him he'd make his way up to my tower to tell me all about it. I think that for someone like Harry, having a person who won't judge him when he lets down his guard is something that he values for its rarity.

Now I let him sit in silence, merely curling up beside him, waiting to see if he wanted to talk. Eventually he broke the silence.

"Dumbledore's been missing with my life again."

Once again I felt the desire to invoke some of the less …pleasant family magics on the man. Honestly, could anyone have made a bigger mess of Harry's life? Well, probably, but nonetheless they'd have to be talented to beat Dumbledore's record.

I didn't reply, merely waited, listening.

"Believe it or not, Draco Malfoy thinks I'm his mate, and of course Dumbledore's all for it. Doesn't care what I think, what I feel, just says that it's my responsibility and expects me to do it, that's it. Never mind that I hate Malfoy's guts, that for all he knows I could be in love with someone else, or even that Malfoy's practically a Death Eater-in training. I have absolutely no say in any of this at all, and when I turned Malfoy down he got all mad and disappointed at me like I'd set fire to his office or something."

Ooh, there's an idea to add to my list.

"Lovely suggestion. Mind if I try it?"

He snorted.

"Not at all. Be my guest. The bastard deserves it."

"That he does," I agree. The number of students I've talked to in my time who owe their troubles to him, through either direct interference or a lack of action... I still remember, a long time ago, a small boy who looked a lot like Harry, telling me about the horrible things that happened to him over the summer and how Dumbledore refused to help him and how frightened he was that things would get even worse… Fear leads to suffering, suffering leads to hate, hate leads to the Dark Side… even the muggles get it right sometimes. Little Tom's a Dark Lord now, the fear of all of Britain. I doubt many people would believe me if I told them he used to be a scared, abused little boy, but he was once. He needn't have been, though. Like they say, all that evil needs to flourish is for good men to stand by and let it happen. Albus Dumbledore's done a lot of standing by.

Harry sighed and rested his head on his knees. I wished that I was a little more corporeal just so that I could rest my hand on his shoulder. That boy needs a little more friendly touch in his life. I swear to Merlin, one of these days I'm going to go haunt those relatives of his and put the fear of the Blacks into them. Until then, I just have to offer him what I can.

"I don't understand why he does it," Harry whispers, and it's the heartbroken whisper of a child who has been hurt all his life and doesn't know why. "Doesn't he realize that I have feelings, that all those things he does hurt me? He's slowly taking everything I still have, and he doesn't even realize it." The red strands, fewer and smaller now, swirl gently in agreement. "I'm just so sick of it, Thyone, all the pain and all the bullshit and all the manipulations and lies. Why can't anyone just see me for what I am? Not even Ron and Hermione do, really. Even they expect me to be the hero. I'm never allowed to just leave it to somebody else. I'm so tired, and so old, and I'm barely sixteen years old. Why should I care about the world when the world doesn't care about me?"

His words sound like the ones someone else said to me a long time ago, and once again Riddle rises to my mind, haunted black eyes swimming with pain and sorrow and the beginnings of an all-consuming hatred that later will destroy him and much of the wizarding world. Harry raises his head to look at me, desperate for some kind of comfort, eyes swollen and shining with tears and face wet. Suddenly I can Feel it, as surely as if Fate and Destiny were spread out before me in a map. We're balanced on the edge of a precipice, an apex, and we could go one of two ways. Destiny depends on which path is chosen. The Sight tells me that my actions will determine what happens next.

Resolve grips me. I know one path already; I have walked it with Tom Riddle, to whom I offered comfort and an ear but little action. I will not let Harry take that path. A ghost might not be able to do much, but whatever I could do I would.

"I care, Harry," I said softly. "I don't know how much I can do, but I assure you that I will help you anyway I can."

Harry stared at me in disbelief, but I could see the faint flicker of hope in his eyes.

"But you're a ghost," he said blankly. "What could you do?"

I offered him a grim smile.

"I am a Black, Harry, and Blacks have their ways of doing things even in death. Anyone who dares mess with one of us soon finds that they have made a grave mistake."

Harry smiled at me, brilliantly, and even though I've been dead for a good two hundred years I swear I feel my heart stop and my breath catch. When those eyes glow like that it's a sight to see. No wonder so many girls have such a thing for him.

I can feel the uncertainty vanish and the cogs and wheels of Fate start to turn, and for a moment the entire future dependent on this moment is spread out before me in all its glory, spinning and forming, inexorably knitting together to create a path that is set in stone. A moment later everything is normal, only the faint purrings of Fate and Destiny indicating that anything important has taken place.

"Come on, let's go see my friends," Harry said, getting to his feet.

I smile, and together we leave the Astronomy Tower.

I do not regret it. At all.


End file.
